Toilets of the World

Who Invented the Flush Toilet?

Toilets are not new, they have been around since the Stone Age,
and flushing toilets are old enough that history doesn't
record their invention.
But then things fell apart after the Roman Empire fell apart.
Flushing toilets on a modern design were finally re-invented
in England a little before 1600,
wrapped up in some royal court intrigue.

Sir John Harington was born in 1561 in Kelston,
Somerset, in southeastern England.
His mother was a gentlewoman of
the Privy Chamber of Queen Elizabeth I.

The Privy Chamber was the most influential operating
department within the English royal household.
Control of the Privy Chamber meant control of the ruler.
What had simply been the Chamber of the King had been divided
under King Henry VIII (ruled 1509-1547)
into the Privy Chamber, the Presence Chamber, and the
Great Hall, working out from the innermost private space.
The Privy Chamber included the ruler's bedroom, library,
study and toilet.

As King Henry VIII grew older and fatter,
the position of Groom of the Stool became ever more
influential.
Meanwhile, the work involved remained rather unpleasant.
The Groom of the Stool,
more formally titled the Groom of the King's Close Stool,
was in charge of the royal excretion
and was tasked with removing the excrement and cleaning
the King's anal area after defecation.

Dwight Eisenhower
was the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Western Europe
during World War II.
In 1952 and 1956 he was elected to two four-year terms as
President of the U.S.A.

While President he used his farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
as a retreat where he met with other world leaders including
Churchill, De Gaulle, and Krushchev.
He then retired to that farm after leaving office.

Welcome to the Toilets of the World,
where you can view toilets from all around the world.
Are you wondering how to use a
bidet, or even what a
bidet is?
Curious about what the toilets are like in a specific country
such as France,
Turkey,
China,
Greece,
Japan,
or many others?
Would you like to see some of the
worst toilets
in the world?
Or maybe you're interested in
historical toilets, from ancient
Greece
and
Rome,
or even the
Stone Age?
Do you wonder who
invented the flush toilet?
(It wasn't
Thomas Crapper)
You've come to the right place!
The Toilets of the World are ready for your visit.
Learn about toilets, bidets, urinals, sinks, tubs,
and other plumbing from all around the world.

Keep This Book In Your Bathroom

[....] 2.6 billion people don't have sanitation.
I don't mean that they have no toilet in their house
and must use a public one with queues and fees.
Or that they have an outhouse, or a rickety shack that
empties into a filthy drain or pigsty.
All that counts as sanitation, though not a safe variety.
The people who have those are the fortunate ones.
Four in ten people have no access to any latrine,
toilet, bucket, or box.
Nothing.
Instead they defecate by train tracks and in forests.
They do it in plastic bags and fling them through the
air in narrow slum alleyways.
If they are women, they get up at 4 A.M. to be able to
do their business under cover of darkness for reasons
of modesty, risking rape and snakebites.
Four in ten people live in situations where they are
surrounded by human excrement because it is in the bushes
outside the village by in their city yards, left
by children outside the backdoor.
It is tramped back in on their feet, carried on fingers
onto clothes, food, and drinking water.

[....] Poor sanitation, bad hygiene, and unsafe water —
usually unsafe because it has fecal particles in it —
cause one in ten of the world's illnesses.
[....] Diarrhea — nearly 90 percent of which is caused
by fecally contaminated food or water — kills a child
every fifteen seconds.
The number of children who have died from diarrhea
in the last decade [1998-2008]
exceeds the total number of people killed
by armed conflict since the Second World War.